


Campe Diem, Carpe Noctem

by Campernetics



Series: Gwenvid Week 2018 [1]
Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Camper AU, David's like 14, F/M, Gwenvid Week 2018, background characters getting that teen smooch on for plot purposes, gwen's like 15/16, gwenvid - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 17:51:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15823935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Campernetics/pseuds/Campernetics
Summary: Gwenvid week 2018! Day one: 10 years earlier/camper au (combined!)David's a good kid. Save for a little bit of curfew breaking, of course.





	Campe Diem, Carpe Noctem

**Author's Note:**

> For the wife, forest, who organized gwenvid week this year! Sorry This is barely beta'd! I've never met formatting before in my life.
> 
> TEEN CAMPERS TEEN CAMPERS

“Come on, Davey! I promised her I’d be there, and no one’s gonna even notice.”

“But what if they do a curfew check? Mr Campbell said-”

“Campbell _never_ leaves spooky island at night, Davey! And the counselors will be asleep. I promise, nothing bad’s gonna happen.”

David glances uneasily across the mess hall, half-expecting to meet the disapproving gaze of the counselors, like they somehow overhead their plotting. They’re not looking at him, though, too busy chatting to one of the other campers.

“I’m just… I’m really not sure.”

Jacob sighs theatrically, slumping to rest his head on the table. “I’m fiendin’ to see her, Davey. She's real special.”

David bites his lip, thinking for a moment. He doesn't approve of sneaking out of camp (and the risk of getting sent home for breaking curfew curls coldly in his stomach) but Jacob’s been a good friend this summer. Besides, there is something a _little_ romantic about it. Sneaking out to see the girl of your dreams from a rival camp, it’s like something out of a movie. Like Romeo and Juliet, only without the dying.

“As long as we’re not gone long,” he murmurs, and Jacob sits up with a beaming grin, shoving his shoulder affectionately against David’s.

“You’re the best, dude!”

David laughs. “If we get caught-”

“I’ll take the blame, I swear.” He presses a hand to his chest. “ _No, sir, Davey's just my hostage, don't punish him!”_

David grins. “Exactly.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Ready?” Jacob whispers, peeking out of the tent.

“Ready,” David echoes from behind him, and he is; Fleecy jacket, hiking boots, water bottle, compass, flashlight, Campbell Co. brand Bear Repellent- everything one might need for a half hour walk along a flat path in the middle of the night.

They slip out of their tent, keeping their footsteps as light as they can as they creep between the others and towards the woods.

David’s heart pounds, expecting a spotlight to trap him like an escaping prisoner at any moment. “Jake, you sure you know the way?”

“There’s a path. It’s easy, I promise.”  
“And she couldn’t have just come to us?” he adds under his breath, and Jacob jostles him slightly in passing.

“She’s a lady,” he sniffs. “She can’t be expected to do something like that. It’s not that long a walk, come on. You love hiking.”

“I love group hiking activities with supervision,” David corrects, following behind him. As soon as they're a few steps along the path, beyond the treeline, Jacob flicks on his flashlight and shines it at the dirt.

The walk goes faster than David expected, once the guilt of sneaking out has eased a little. It’s actually kinda nice out here at night. It’s just like the day, only darker; they even pass an owl, sitting and glaring down at them from the branches as if disapproving of the noise they’re making. The conversation’s path is twice as winding as the one they're on, covering every topic from camp to school to games to dogs with adequate intermissions for Jacob to gush about his secret girlfriend.

He slows to a halt when the dim garden lights of the flower scout’s camp come into view beyond the trees. “Alright, we’re almost there. Come on, this way.”

“Hey- wait, we’re leaving the path?”

“We’re just going around, don’t worry.” Jacob nods towards the way the path turns into gravel as it weaves through the cabins. “We can’t walk right through the middle.”

“Oh, right.”

David follows him, skirting the well-trimmed edges of the campgrounds. It’s nice here, he thinks. The grounds are a lot neater, the paths lined with well-kept flowerbeds and hedges. Not that David doesn't adore the untamed nature, of course! He just knows how to appreciate some hard gardening work.

“There a shed up ahead,” Jacob whispers to him. “Sandy said she’d meet me there. Can you stay here and-”

“Yeah, I know.” David hesitates, and then offers him an encouraging smile. “Good luck.”

“Thanks, dude. You’re the best. We won't be too long, I promise. I just wanna see her.”

“I know.” he shoves Jacob forwards gently, and he gives him a grin before making a beeline for a shed, illuminated only by a small, yellowed light above the door.

David looks around, spying a smallish boulder that looks at plenty sittable height for a lanky youth such as himself. It seems to be decorative, but he can't read the plaque fastened to the base without using his flashlight. It's probably not important, anyway. He perches himself on the cold stone, drawing his legs up and settling in for a long night. Maybe he should’ve brought a book or something. Could’ve stolen a gameboy from the contraband box, maybe, as long as they were breaking all the rules tonight.

After a few minutes of “name that nocturnal creature sound”, a sound that definitely doesn't belong to a forest-dweller breaks through the dim night.

“Uh, hey.”

David jumps, whipping his head towards the source of the noise.

A few feet away stands a flower scout, a loose purple hoodie pulled over her blouse, the bottom of her pink gingham skirt peeking out from underneath. David's heart skitters to a stop, a thousand excuses springing to the top of her tongue in case she yells. In her hand is a small battery-powered lantern, and it's hard to tell in the low light coming from it but he thinks he recognizes her.

“It’s….David, right?”

He'd know that voice anywhere, and apparently she recognizes him too. At least she's not screaming. He sits up, letting his legs slip down.

“Um- right! Gwen! Hi!”

“Hi.”

For a moment, they just stand there. David's heart beats harshly against the inside of his ribs, the adrenaline of having been found _sneaking around the girl's camp_ making his stomach feel cold and his legs a little bit like jello. He likes to think he's a good person, but if he needs to… well, Jacob already knew he'd be the one under the bus.

She nods in the direction of the shed.

“You here with Jacob?”

He nods, apprehensive.

“Y- yeah. I was supposed to be-”

“Lookout, right?”

David nods again, and Gwen shoves her free hand into the pocket of her hoodie, the corner of her mouth turning up in a smirk.

“You could probably be doing a better job. You didn't even hear me coming.”

“I heard you coming! I just thought.. You were a deer. Or something.”

She laughs. “You’re a shitty liar.”

David bites his lip at the curse. Last time they'd met, at one of the multi-camp gatherings- she'd cursed then, too. Not at him, of course. He'd just… overheard it. Been standing nearby while she'd been talking quietly with a couple of the other flower scouts about that Pikeman guy, the one who'd kept talking about the Woodscouts being a family tradition and his little brother following in his footsteps and then David had stopped listening, because he didn't actually care.

(She'd called him a creepy motherfucker, and David's eyes had gone wide. Someone had told him her name was Gwen, and he hadn't managed to work up the nerve to say hello by the time the day had drawn to an end.)

He taps the heel of one foot against the boulder nervously. “You're not… you're not gonna tell on me, are you? I promise I wasn't doing anything shady!”

“Just hanging out in the dark at an all-girl’s camp in the middle of the night.”

“Jake- he asked me-”

“Alright, alright, don't bug out. You're on lookout duty, I know. Why do you think I'm out here?”

“Oh.” David toys nervously with the compass clipped to his belt loop. “Did Sandy ask you to come?”

“She _made_ me come. I owed her.”

“What for?”

Gwen levels him with the look of a worldly girl sparing pity on a hapless young boy. “Don't worry about it. Girl stuff.”

“Oh.” David's only vaguely sure of what that means, and just like the last time they met, he feels a little bit like a kid. She's not that much older than him- only one or two years- but she carries it well. It doesn't help that she's taller than him. David isn't worried, though. His mom says girls just grow faster than boys. He'll catch up!

She looks at him, unimpressed, and David feels obligated to fill the silence.

“U- um, if you want, I can just be… the lookout. If you don't wanna wait around.”

Gwen shakes her head.

“The lookout who didn't hear me coming? Yeah, I don't think so.”

David scowls, drawing up his legs again to wrap his arms around them and rest his chin on his knees. “I was just distracted.”

“By what?”

“Don't worry about it. Boy- uh, guy stuff.”

“Right.” Gwen looks at the shed and then back at David. “Whatever. Two sets of eyes are better than one, anyway.”

“Y- yeah. Smart thinking.”

He knows he's not in trouble, but apparently the rest of him hasn't gotten the message, because his stomach is still knotted, his heart still pounding too hard.

The silence stretches out awkwardly between them until Gwen sets her lantern on the ground.

David swallows before speaking. “You can sit down, if you want.”

“On what? You're sitting on the only rock around.”

Immediately, David scrambles off and skitters a few steps away.

“Here! You can take it!”

Gwen frowns, crossing her arms.

“What about you?”

“I can sit on the ground!”

He drops into a cross-legged position with a proud grin, and Gwen's pretty half smile comes back.

“You're just gonna sit on the dirt.”

“It's just dirt.”

She climbs onto the boulder, settling down and crossing her ankles like a lady. “Gross.”

“It's just dirt!” David repeats. “It's not gonna hurt me!”

“There might be, like, bugs and shit.”

David squares his shoulders. “I can handle a few bugs.”

“Wow. And here I was, thinking you were kind of a wimp.”

“Wh- hey,” he complains, and she laughs.

“Don't get all twisted, I'm just joking. I'm sure you're only a little bit of a wimp.”

“If I was a wimp, would I be here? Sneaking into camps after lights out?”

“Maybe if you were a creepy wimp?”

“I'm not,” he huffs. “I'm just being a good friend.”

“Yeah…” Gwen glances at the shed. “I guess.”

Silence settles over them, broken only by the occasional call of a nocturnal creature. Gwen seems unnerved by them, and David has to wonder what kind of classes they run at the flower scouts. There’s gotta be something about wildlife, right?

“Are you okay?”

She breathes out, hugging her arms close to her. “Fine.”

David unclips the small canister of bear-away spray from his belt loop, turning it over in his fingers a few times. He doesn't wanna make it seem like he's making fun of her, but she looks so uncomfortable.

“Hey, do you, uh, want this? I've got more back in my tent.” He holds it up to her.

“What is it?”

“It's bear-away spray! It's made by Campbell Corp!”

She takes it from him, squinting at the label.

“Like the same Campbell as Camp Campbell?”

“Mr. Campbell's very industrious.”

Gwen hums doubtfully. “Hey, pass me the light?”

David hands her the lantern and she peers at the little canister, turning it around before taking the handle of the lantern in her teeth to pick at the label.

It peels away easily, and she smirks around the plastic handle. She takes the lantern from her mouth, grinning.

“This isn't gonna stop a bear.”

David frowns  “Why not?”

“It’s expired body spray with a cheap label over the top. And I'm pretty sure this brand is actually discontinued, too.”

She tosses it back to him, and it lands in the dirt beside his legs. Dismayed, David picks it up, looking at the shining “Hatchet” label beneath the peeled plastic.

“I guess it's... just gonna make the bear smell nice,” he mumbles, and Gwen snorts.

“Maybe he'll choke on it if you throw it into his mouth.”

David gapes up at her. “That'd kill it!”

“Is that not an option? Because if I'm picking between myself and a bear-”

“It’s a living creature!”

“So am I! Are you telling me you wouldn't kill a bear to save someone's life?”

David hesitates.

“Whose life?”

Gwen feigns indignation. (He thinks it's fake, anyway. The corners of her mouth keep turning up.) “David! _Mine!”_

David opens his mouth, but something catches his eyes: a flash of light across the other side of the campgrounds.

He leans to the side to look past Gwen.

“Um, what's that?”

Gwen looks over her shoulder. “What's- _shit._ ”

Her mouth snaps shut and she practically leaps off the boulder, reaching for David to drag him down with her into a crouch behind it. With her other hand she snags the lantern from the dirt, clicking it off.

“What's wrong?” David whispers, and Gwen presses her palm to his mouth.

“Shh! It's our garden mother. She's not supposed to be up. I don't know why she is!”

“Oh,” he says, muffled by her hand.

She tugs him a little closer as the light bounces along a path, getting closer.

“Yeah, so keep a lid on it! If we get busted it's over for me! I'm already on my second strike!”

David mimes zipping his mouth shut and Gwen cautiously takes away her hand.

As the crunching of footsteps on gravel gets closer, Gwen tenses, but it soon passes by and begins to fade. She peeks over the edge of the boulder, and David holds his breath.

“Okay, I think she's gone. But she might come back, so I'm just gonna stay down here for a bit.”

“What about the bugs?” he asks, stupidly. He can't see the look on her face in the dim moonlight, but he can just make out that she's turned towards him.

“Thought you said you could handle a few bugs. You can just protect me.”

Something in David's chest flutters warmly for a moment.

“S- sure. I mean, no biggie. No problem.”

Suddenly, her hand slides off his shoulder, like she'd just remembered it was there, and it takes the warm feeling with it.

“So, uh, hey,” he blurts, floundering for anything to focus on that isn't the jittery feeling in his stomach. “What are strikes?”

“What?”

“You said you already had two strikes. Did you do something bad?”

“Oh.” Gwen peers over the boulder one more time, her voice casual. “Nothing big. One thing wasn't even my fault.”

“What happened?”

“One of the other girls stole some cigarettes from the garden mother's purse. It's bullshit, cause I didn't even try one.”

“Were you gonna?”

She shrugs. “Maybe.”

“Woah.” David's quiet for a moment. “Smoking’s bad for you, y'know.”

“I know.”

“If that happens again, you should say no.”

“I wasn't gonna smoke for real. I was just gonna try it. But it smelled really bad, anyway, so I probably won't.”

“That's… good. I'm glad. What was the other strike?”

He can just make out her toothy grin in the moonlight.

“You couldn't guess?”

“...Breaking curfew?” He suggests.

She shakes her head.

 _“Bad language._ It's not ladylike enough, I guess.”

(The static-fuzzy fluttering feeling is back, like beetles crawling along the walls of his stomach.)

“I don't know what happens at three strikes,” she adds, “But I know if we get caught here Sandy’d get sent home.”

“Just for breaking curfew?”

Gwen pauses for a moment. She clicks the little lantern's light back on, looking blankly at him.

“They're not _just_ breaking curfew, David.”

David resists the urge to ask her to call him Davey. For the first time in his life, the name feels a little… juvenile, maybe.

“What do you mean?”

“They're, like, making out and stuff. You know? That's why we had to do this at night.”

“Oh.” David's mouth feels dry. “I- I mean, yeah, of course.”

“You can't tell me you didn't know that.”

“I hadn't really, um, thought about it.”

“Never had a girlfriend?”

“No, I- I have,” he lies.

Gwen snickers. “That's okay, I've never had a boyfriend either. I told Sandy I had one back at school, but really it was just this one guy who I had to go to the movies with cause he kept asking me.”

(The beetles in his stomach dig their pincers in.)

“You didn't wanna go with him?”

“Nah, he's weird.” She pauses, shivering. “God, it's freezing out here. I thought this was supposed to be summer. I wish I'd brought a blanket or something.”

“Oh!” David springs to his feet, shucking off his fleecy jacket. “Here, put this on!”

“Aren't you gonna get cold?”

“Nope! I run hot,” he boasts, presenting the jacket to her. She looks at him doubtfully for a moment before shrugging off her own hoodie.

“Here, trade me.”

“You don't need to do that!”

“Don't make me feel like an asshole, here. Just take it.”

She lays it on the boulder and lets David help her into his jacket.

“Oh, wow. You weren't kidding, this thing is _warm._ ”

David beams. “Hope it helps!”

“It does. Thanks.” She picks up her hoodie again, holding it out to him. “But seriously, you need to put this on. You're only wearing a t-shirt.”

David hesitates, and she throws it at him. He just barely manages to catch it, pinning it to his chest before it falls.

“Are you sure?”

“If I wasn't sure, do you really think I'd give my favourite hoodie to a guy I just met?”

“We've met before!”

She waves a hand, leaning back against the boulder. “It doesn't count. We didn't really talk last time.”

“You were with your friends,” he defends weakly, pulling the thin hoodie on.

“What, too afraid to come up to a bunch of _girls?”_ she taunts, wiggling her fingers in his direction. David sets his hands on his hips.

“I was busy that day, actually. There were a lot of people to talk to.”

“I saw that. Saw you bouncing around like a pinball.”

He's not... sure if that's a compliment or an insult.

Before he can say anything, a soft creaking interrupts them, and Jacob slips out of the shed, leading a girl by the hand. They pause just outside the door, speaking too quietly for David to hear. The girl- Sandy, David assumes, although he's never been formally introduced- leans against the wall, twirling a strand of hair between her fingers. Jacob's hands settle on her waist, and David looks away as he presses his mouth to hers like a goodbye.

“Squeamish?” Gwen murmurs, and David shakes his head.

“Just giving them privacy.”

“Hm.”

A moment passes.

“Looks like we'll probably be back here again soon, so… I can give you your jacket back next time.”

“Sounds- good idea, yeah.”

She smiles at him.

“If you don't bring my hoodie back, I'll have to hunt you down for it.”

Words are just a little harder to find this time around, but David manages. “You got it.”

Jacob rejoins them, practically skipping. He smiles briefly at Gwen before turning to David.

“Let's head back. It's pretty late.”

“Sure. Um, seeya, Gwen.”

“Night, David. Don't get lost on the way home.”

“You too. Um, I mean...” Dang it. Dang it dang it dang it.

Gwen snickers.

“I’ll try.”

She gives him a short wave and heads off towards where Sandy is waiting by the shed. David waves back, even though she's turned away.

“C'mon, dude,” Jacob says, already walking, and David blinks.

“Right!”

He follows Jacob back around the edge of the camp and into the forest, hugging his arms. Gwen's hoodie smells nice. Real girly in a way he doesn't have the words for, and each time he takes a breath the beetles in his stomach rattle their wings against their shells.

He catches up to walk side by side with Jacob, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“So…” he clears his throat, keeps it casual.

“When are you seeing her again?”

**Author's Note:**

> God I really don't know how to write anymore. This is so dialogue heavy it'd drown in the shallow end of a pool.  
> That being said; buy my love with comments <3


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